What happens when a 170-year-old fashion house stops trying to preserve its identity and starts trying to live it?
At Chelsea College of Arts, under the white light of a space that felt more like an art school than a luxury showroom, Daniel Lee presented a different kind of Burberry.
There were trench coats, of course.
There were checks, florals, rainwear, tailoring and all the recognisable evidence of a house that has spent more than a century turning British weather into cultural capital. But something had shifted.
The surface was no longer immaculate.
Trenches were rumpled. Checks became hand-drawn. Florals escaped their geometry. Colours became louder. Faces appeared where logos might pponce have been. Leather looked lived-in. And somewhere between a sheer pastel raincoat, a pair of low-slung jeans and an embroidered mimosa, Burberry seemed to be asking a question that is less about fashion than identity:
What happens when an icon stops behaving like an icon?
For Spring/Summer 2027, Lee invited Celia Birtwell into the Burberry story. At 85, the legendary textile designer belongs to a very different generation of British fashion, one that emerged from the bohemian London of the late 1960s and early 1970s alongside Ossie Clark and David Hockney. Her contribution is not decorative in the conventional sense. It changes the emotional temperature of the house.
Birtwell’s flowers, ginghams, stripes, faces and imperfect graphic gestures disrupt the strictness of the Burberry Check, turning one of luxury’s most recognisable patterns into something more personal, almost domestic. The Guardian described the collaboration as a process of “humanising” Burberry; Vogue similarly identified Birtwell as the collection’s most unexpected form of youthful rebellion.
And that is where SS27 becomes more interesting than a simple exercise in heritage.
Because Burberry has always been about the transformation of function into symbolism.
Thomas Burberry’s gabardine was invented to confront the weather. The trench coat emerged from military necessity. The Check began as a lining. The Equestrian Knight carried the language of movement and exploration. What followed was the strange alchemy of fashion: practical objects becoming social signs, social signs becoming status symbols, status symbols becoming pop culture.
Christopher Bailey understood that transformation perhaps better than anyone. During his long tenure, Burberry became one of the defining British fashion stories of the 2000s and 2010s: romantic, musical, youthful, cinematic and aggressively connected to the emerging culture of digital fashion. He did not erase the trench; he made a new generation want one.
Riccardo Tisci subsequently pushed the house into a darker, more global vocabulary: gothic, sensual, urban and street-facing.
Lee’s Burberry is beginning to do something else.
Rather than asking how to make Burberry look younger, he seems increasingly interested in asking what makes British culture young in the first place.
That distinction matters.
There is a difference between youth as an aesthetic and youth as a culture.
SS27 is filled with the latter: music, art school, football-adjacent streetwear, nightlife, florals, old London, new London, humour, imperfection, references to the 1970s and the visual memory of British counterculture. Central Cee’s surprise runway debut makes the point almost absurdly clearly: the rapper appeared midway through the show in a hooded rain jacket, mega-low jeans and a shoelace functioning as a belt. British Vogue called the moment one of the week’s memorable surprises.
Across the room, meanwhile, sat Celia Birtwell.
One generation enters the runway; another watches from the front row.
Between them sits Burberry.
This is perhaps the most intelligent aspect of Lee’s current strategy. He is not attempting to replace the old Burberry customer with a younger one. He is trying to construct a cultural continuum in which both can exist.
The collection’s references to the late 1960s and 1970s are therefore not simply nostalgic. Birtwell’s world – the world of Ossie Clark, Hockney, bohemian London and graphic textiles – represents a moment when British fashion was not merely selling clothes but producing a recognisable cultural attitude.
Lee borrows that attitude rather than reproducing its wardrobe.
The result is a Burberry that feels less polished, less corporate and more lived-in.
That word – lived-in – may actually be the key to the collection.
Lee has spoken about his preference for things that do not feel perfect: material tarnish, rumples, smudges and the evidence that an object has been owned and worn. Reuters noted the designer’s emphasis on “intentional imperfection”, while The Impression interpreted the move as part of a broader shift towards relatability in Burberry’s contemporary storytelling.
Luxury has historically sold the fantasy of the untouched object.
But contemporary culture increasingly values the opposite.
The screenshot. The worn sneaker. The vintage jacket. The customised bag. The imperfect photograph. The object that has acquired a life outside the showroom.
In this context, the rumpled trench is not simply a styling decision.
It is a sociological one.
Burberry is trying to move from perfection to personality.
The Check follows the same trajectory. Instead of functioning as a rigid corporate pattern, it becomes a surface that can be interrupted, redrawn, embroidered, distorted and personalised. Birtwell’s hand enters a system that was historically defined by repetition.
The logo becomes a drawing.
The uniform becomes an individual wardrobe.
The heritage becomes material for interpretation.
That is why the florals matter.
On paper, flowers could make Burberry softer, prettier, even safer. Yet Lee keeps introducing friction: boxier silhouettes, bare shoulders, slouching boots, chains, denim, technical outerwear and the harder edge of London. The Impression specifically noted Lee’s desire to retain “a bit of London” and an edge so that the florals would not become merely pretty.
It is a balancing act between romance and abrasion.
Between Celia Birtwell and Central Cee.
Between the trench and the hoodie.
Between the archive and the street.
Between the institution and the individual.
And perhaps between Burberry’s past and its anxiety about the future.
Because this collection arrives at a particular moment for the house. Under CEO Joshua Schulman and Lee, Burberry has been attempting to recover from a period in which its identity and commercial performance had become increasingly uncertain. The Guardian notes the company’s recent return to revenue growth, while the wider fashion press has connected the brand’s renewed focus on outerwear, accessibility and British cultural references with its turnaround strategy. (The Guardian)
That makes SS27 more than another seasonal collection.
It is part of a repositioning.
And there is an unavoidable tension here: how spontaneous can a luxury brand be when spontaneity itself has become a commercial strategy?
BoF’s Tim Blanks sees the collection as youthful, even suggesting a distant kinship with Coach, while Vogue points out how heavily commercialised the collection ultimately is.
That contradiction should not necessarily be considered a weakness.
In contemporary fashion, authenticity is often produced with extraordinary precision.
The imperfect trench is still a product.
The hand-drawn Check is still a system.
The Central Cee moment is still casting.
The art-school location is still communication.
The nostalgia is still strategy.
But perhaps that is exactly what fashion has always done.
The most successful luxury houses turn cultural contradictions into desire.
And Burberry’s contradiction is particularly British: a brand founded on weatherproof military clothing now selling an idea of Britishness that encompasses bohemia, football, music, aristocracy, youth culture, art school and the pub.
This is where Daniel Lee’s Burberry begins to distinguish itself from Christopher Bailey’s.
Bailey made Britishness glamorous.
Lee is trying to make it alive.
And that may explain why Spring/Summer 2027 feels more resolved than some of Lee’s earlier seasons. Instead of imposing an external idea of coolness onto Burberry, he is increasingly mining the contradictions that were already there.
The trench does not need to become cool.
It already survived two world wars, Hollywood, punk, Britpop, street culture, celebrity culture and the internet.
The Check does not need to disappear.
It needs to be allowed to misbehave.
And Burberry does not necessarily need to become young.
It needs to become relevant to people who are young.
That is a much harder task.
At Chelsea College of Arts, Celia Birtwell’s flowers met Central Cee’s jeans, David Bowie’s voice filled the room, and a 170-year-old trench coat was asked to live another life.
Maybe that is what heritage is supposed to do.
Not preserve the past.
Keep it moving.